


In Seeking, Find

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [139]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Comfort, Gen, Implied Emotional Hurt, Introspection, Kamino Era, M/M, Star Wars AU - Soft Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29351730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: Bly finds shades of what he's looking for, but only when Neyo doesn't know he's looking.
Relationships: CC-5052 | Bly/CC-8826 | Neyo, Faie/CC-1138 | Bacara (implied)
Series: Soft Wars [139]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 17
Kudos: 184





	In Seeking, Find

“I’m catching a corner here,” a voice informs. "Need a quarter-shift of down time."

"Get out," Neyo's words snap nearly before the others clear the air.

“Watch my skids,” it continues, uncaring. "Thanks, vod'ika."

Neyo doesn’t snort. Doesn’t scoff, doesn’t mock. Doesn't do anything any of Bly's brothers would to protest this invasion of his space, or to enforce the bounds he's set for himself flush with the towering sentry of four durasteel walls. A private room is unheard of for vode; it would be more than worth a confrontation. No, instead Neyo makes no sound at all. Bly feels predatory tension coiled down Neyo’s legs, pressed up against Bly’s back. Bly lays, loose-limbed and listening. He’s always been good at paying attention without seeming to.

“Bold,” Neyo finally hisses, filtered through razor-bared teeth eager to cut. “ _Ballsy_.”

The other, he’s a vod on the far side of the final cycle by the sound of him. Just like Bly and Neyo: short of only their whites and some scattered evaluations to make that last step from cadet to warrior. The vod laughs. “Practical,” he corrects. His voice is a pleasant sort of dare. It’s one that says ‘you won’t’ and ‘but if you do, I’m ready’.

“You think so?”

Neyo used to get loud, once, when he was angry. Louder, _bigger_ , more present. Now he goes silverweb silent, strill steady. Frightening, maybe. Maybe yesterday’s Bly would have thought so. Today’s Bly has had last night. Fear doesn’t come.

Neyo’s hand sits heavy in the center of Bly’s back, searing heat cut through the ice-bite of the rest of the room. It’s as if he’s folded the lasts wisps of lassitude back over and on themselves and pressed it down against Bly like a blanket. It isn’t hard for Bly to hold that sleep-heaviness. Neyo has only pointed his weapons outwards. To Bly, he points curious fingertips, steadying palms.

There’s a series of clicks across the room Bly can’t quite trace and a rustling he can’t place. A wash of air: a blanket being unwrapped and spread, a pillow thumped between a back and a wall.

“The problem with being on top vod’ika,” the other vod breezes with a smile in his voice like a reaper come due. “Is there’s nowhere to go but down. You don’t have anything to gain from deranking me.”

Now, Neyo scoffs. “There’s always the sheer satisfaction.”

The vod laughs. “Go ahead,” he challenges. “I like my odds. And I’ll _really_ like this nice big room when I win.”

“Get karked.”

“Not for at _least_ another hour vod’ika, I need some recovery time.”

“You-”

Neyo shifts and his knee knocks oddly against Bly’s ribs. Not painfully, really, but something almost like it. Bly winces away and a grunt of air tumbles past his lips.

The vod is silent, that vicious, white-fanged, startled-beast silent. Neyo rubs slow circles against Bly’s back; his hand drags slow lines in the thin sheet that separates skin from skin. Neyo swallows, and Bly feels it all down his side.

“Everything is alright,” Neyo murmurs, like a lie he’ll make true with his own hands. “Go back to sleep. You’re alright.”

Bly lets Neyo feel him settle. He feels Neyo do the same.

“He’s still here.” He sounds lost, the other vod. Young, all of a sudden. They all are, really, Bly knows. But Neyo and his like, they’ve always seemed so much … not older. So much more _lived_ than the vode that surround Bly himself. It’s startling, those moments when truth peeks through and he remembers they aren’t at all.

“What’s it to you?”

“He’s asleep?”

“Tell me something Faie,” Neyo says, sweet like something that sticks between the teeth. “If you had woken him up, how do you think the rest of this conversation would have gone?”

The vod, Faie, slips closer across the floor. Neyo tugs the sheets up over Bly’s bare shoulders and tucks them around his chin. Shielding him.

“Just like that. He doesn’t even care-”

“Why would he?” Neyo’s hand doesn’t shake, his words stay steady. His leg is a comforting press of bone-deep heat against Bly’s side. Neyo swallows, and he sounds like he doesn’t shake only because he’s chosen not to. “He doesn’t have anything to fear. Not from me.”

“He did the same thing,” Faie whispers, rushed like a confession. “38. Right after. He. He was falling asleep.”

“How _nice_ for you…”

“Just gave me his back without caring. How are they so … soft?”

Bly doesn’t have to see Neyo’s shrug to feel it shudder against him. “Does it matter?”

“ _Doesn’t it_?”

“Soft doesn’t mean weak.”

There’s an elastic-stretched moment of contemplation. “No one,” Faie muses, “would consider 38 weak.”

Neyo scoffs. “I’d pay to watch you fight Bly.”

More than the rest, that nearly moves Bly. He lets the pleased flush wash through him, and doesn’t twist his face buried in the thin pillow like his butterfly-fluttering gut wants.

Bly’s seen Faie fight. He knows he wouldn’t win. He knows he couldn’t win, couldn’t do what Faie would be willing to, to win. Bly knows he would make Faie’s victory drug-out, hard-fought painful. That’s enough for him.

“If soft doesn’t mean weak,” Faie says. He sounds so, so lost. “Then what does it mean.”

Neyo doesn’t answer. Bly doubts he can. Bly can’t. Moments stretch in gentle circles against Bly’s spine, cool air drying the sweat from his curls at the top of his neck.

“Should I have stayed?”

Neyo’s voice is feline-amused. “Should I know that?”

“You know 38 best.”

Bly doesn’t have to see the slow-bloom superiority on Neyo’s face: he feels it in the way Neyo melts against his side, every touch of him saying ‘I’ve won’. “He won’t be surprised you’re gone,” Neyo offers a cruel gentle. He slides words like blades between the ribs. “Disappointed, maybe. But hardly surprised.”

Seconds hold like spun glass in the air. They shatter as easily. Faie hisses a vicious curse and his footsteps hurtle from the room.

Bly stirs. He can’t not; there’s no sleeping through the noise.

Neyo folds around him like _ beskar'gam _1.

“It’s fine,” Neyo murmurs against his hair. “You’re fine. Sleep, I have watch.”

Bly settles. Neyo, the Neyo Bly was so desperate to find inside this sharp-edged man, the Neyo he’s caught snatches of in gentle touch and moments when he feigns sleep: Neyo settles against him.

“I have you,” Neyo says, and Bly believes him.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Armor. Back  
> 


End file.
